


Revenge Lies In My Bones

by gooddadstan



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: AU, Angst, Demigod AU, Gen, Jason Todd is the son of Nemesis, PJO AU, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 12:23:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20192230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gooddadstan/pseuds/gooddadstan
Summary: Jason Todd is a demigod unclaimed throughout his first life. When he came back from the dead with a vengeance, the symbol above his head only made things worse.





	Revenge Lies In My Bones

There had been many things special about Jason Todd when he showed up at Halfblood Hill. For one thing, he’d arrived without the help of any guide, just coming over the hill battered and bruised. He hadn’t been claimed, which was average, but during the usual round of trying out skills to try and narrow down the list of possible parentage, they could only find an intense love for learning mixed with an apparent aptitude for most things athletic. While he was a very bright boy and a wonderful athlete, nothing he did stood out as skills given from a Godly parent, nor was there any indication of being claimed any time soon. They were forced to simply let him be, staying in the Hermes cabin and going through his routine as freely as he wished. He easily fell into a role of protecting others from the bullying of their peers and learned to fight with a conviction rarely seen even among the children of Ares, quickly carving his place as one of the most skilled demigods alive, happy and capable in a way few were.

Despite this, when he was chosen for a quest, many thought it was a fluke. The children given quests were always claimed, and that had been the truth for centuries. If not long beforehand then almost immediately after. As night fell and midnight passed, however, Jason was left unknowing. Many had their theories, the assorted cabins wanting to take the pride of being the home of a quest-taker, but none could say for certain.

The quest muttered from the Oracle’s lips was a grueling one. Accompanied by Koriand’r, daughter of Hephaestus, and Roy, son of Apollo, Jason set off to kill a monstrosity that had tormented and killed demigods for longer than written history can say. They fought together well, caring for each other and saving each other’s asses whenever necessary. They laughed and they joked, moving across the world to follow the monster and getting closer and closer to stopping his reign of terror. 

It was only in Ethiopia that things started to go south. A warehouse, one of many scattered around the hundred mile radius they’d tracked the monster down to. They’d split up, promising to send up their personalized distress signals should anything happen. Jason didn’t even have time to move his hand. One second, he was standing warily in the seemingly empty warehouse, and the next he was on the floor with his sword too far away to reach. 

Despite their best efforts, they were doomed to failure from the start. After all, by the time Kori and Roy found they needed to get to that particular warehouse, and actually arrive on the premises, there wasn’t much to call a warehouse anymore. It was a pile of rubble on the ground, smoldering and reeking of burnt metal. Scattered debris dotted the landscape, and there was no sign of Jason or their monster. Kori, with her immunity to burns, searched for hours in between the beams, searching for a hidden basement, or the body of their friend under a piece of metal, and after enough time had passed for it to be safe Roy joined her. By nightfall they found nothing, and without the actual quest taker, they could do nothing but begrudgingly return to Halfblood Hill. 

At their return, there was first a rise of jovial applause, before the hunched shoulders and clear lack of a Jason leading them brought the quiet somber lull the camp stayed in for weeks. With no body recovered, they were forced to only presume him dead, but the lack of activity on the monster’s end could only let them hope that he’d gone down with more of a bang than they’d thought. 

A year passed, long and slow. Tales were told of heroes long gone, now peppered with more modern ones of a boy that helped the helpless and stopped a monster despite the odds. New Halfbloods arrived, older ones left to live in the mortal world, and life moved on. After that first year, the mood seemed to pick up significantly, the camp finally starting to truly move on.

Three years after Jason Todd, the unclaimed hero, died in Ethiopia, someone crossed over the crest of Halfblood Hill.

Expecting another raggedy teen, or even a confused child, it was a handful of nymphs who saw him first. They remembered him, always kind and apologizing if he scuffed his foot on a visible root or punched a tree in a not uncommon moment of frustration. They remembered him, but not as he was now. His eyes, once a soothing deep blue, are now an acidic green, piercing in a way that only meant threats. He donned a foreign assortment of blood red, ashy gray, and the tan of leather, knives and swords of celestial bronze scattered across his form. He was back, but not in the way any of the children at Camp Halfblood had ever hoped for.

It had been lunchtime, and the entire mass of demigods were concentrated around familiar tables as he watched them from above. This had to be _perfect,_ they had to know _exactly_ what hit them. They had to know it was _him._

Getting down in front of the table of camp leaders was the easy part. He’d landed in a crouch that would leave some sore muscles later, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed and fought through, and stabbed a celestial bronze knife into the dead center of Bruce’s plate and into the table. Immediately, the man snapped to attention and rose, but his cold expression melted into one of worry as he just barely whispered, “Jaylad?”

Entirely on instinct, Jason snapped back with a simple “No.” His snarl growing as he stood up on the table, he held another knife in his other hand and gripped his empty one into a fist. “I’m not your fuckin’ ‘Jaylad’. You left me, Bruce. Your damned protocols made them leave me there in Ethiopia. I _died,_ Bruce, not took some temporary trip to who knows where like it was all fuckin’ perfect, I died and you didn’t do jack shit about it. He’s still out there! That monstrosity is still out there killing people and you let it! You didn’t do shit about me, Bruce, and for that you’re going to pay.” 

Jason brought his knife high into the air with more a display of dramatics than usefulness, and all hell broke loose. Celestial bronze clashed with celestial bronze, more demigods joining the battle as they all fight against Jason, who’s single-handedly keeping the disorganized mob of children at bay. 

The battle hasn’t gone on long, though, when an unnatural glow begins to fill the room. Neither side knowing what it’s coming from, they look up to see a swirling mass above their heads. A scale, firey and writhing in an unnatural way slowly comes together above Jason’s head, bathing the tables and demigods in a bloody glow as they all seem to let out a simultaneous breath of understanding. “Nemesis.”

Jason, along with the rest of the room, was frozen. Now, he was being claimed. Now, after he’d gone off and _died_ only to come back and be told that nothing was done, not even more than a search of the warehouse for a body by decree of the protocols Bruce put into place. _Now, after she’d had so much fucking time._ All at once, he threw down his dagger and sword, fleeing into the woods as his eyes burned an even brighter green.

He was sick and tired of these people thinking they could use him for means to an end, or _dramatic effect._ He’d show them how much they could control him. They’d regret all they’d done to him, or any other demigod they’d preyed on for so long. A son of Nemesis he was, a son of _revenge_ he was, a tale of anger and hurt written into his bones. If he was fated to revenge, then he was going to make it _hurt._

##### The demigods that thought to ask Hades what happened to Jason Todd after his demise, those that remembered the tale of the son of Nemesis even after years had passed, unclaimed until after death, his suffering and how he turned it back on those that caused it. Those children of Gods that remembered to ask were rewarded with a laugh from Persephone, and a nearly indecipherable phrase about a sweet little boy and his smile, before Hades sent them away with a scowl.


End file.
